askchapo

It's quackery and I'll tell you this, actual physiotherapy from medical professionals is often around the same price as chiropractic care. If you have back issues that "need a chiropractor" then what you really need is physiotherapy where they can target the areas that are giving you trouble and help you develop muscles with exercises that strengthen the back and relieve the pain. Eventually, you don't even need the physiotherapy at all anymore. Unlike chiropractic which will expect that you will never improve and need regular care for the rest of your life.

fuckin crazy to me medical insurance covers chiro but not dental

For spinal manipulation therapy, it helps with acute relief a decent amount and helps with chronic relief a little bit^[Rubinstein et al. 2019 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30867144/]. It isn't good but very slightly better than nothing.

It's nonsense and the outcome ranges from decent massage to life-changing injury.

Best case scenario, it's just massage therapy with a fancy hat on. Worst case scenario, you end up paralyzed.

The only thing that will potentially solve physical pain like this is getting stronger. A good physical therapist will guide on how to do it properly, targeting specific muscles in a specific order for your specific symptoms. Getting massage done can be helpful for relief and getting blood flow to the areas you are working on but on its own it won't solve the problem of being physically weak and your muscles not being able to distribute the kinetic load properly without getting injured.

It's a placebo. A glorified massage masquerading as medical treatment. You get a long time in a room with someone playing doctor, they spend on average 6x the amount of time per client than a real doctor. They listen to your concerns, they 'address' them on the spot, no pills, no needles. They spend the entire time making you feel like you are working on the issue(s) together. Many people flock to this nonsense because of how comercialized and de-humanized American medicine has become as an institution.

It's a part of the health grift scene imo.

Years ago I went to one, once. As my physical therapist actually suggested it. I had terrible back pain at the time and this person started talking about chakras and my internal organs and how something in me isn't aligned right. Also lots of detox talk and psych talk. She manipulated my back with one of those muscle hammers and made things so much worse. I have a degree related to exercise and rehab myself and the things she said were such woowoo that I am still annoyed I spent money on it.

The anti-vax etc. stuff and drinking silver water and such venn diagram also tends to be a full circle with these people.

PT/massage/stretching (it's free) is how you're actually supposed to treat this type of pain

also remember that early chiropractic was a cult and the cofounder murdered the founder because he wasnt monotozing the cult enough

The most life changing therapy for me was Physical Therapy. For years I was going to a chiropractor for neck pain or I’d just crack my neck myself, nothing worked. Then I got into a Motorsport accident and was assigned a PT named Doug who worked with me for three months and gave me a personalized workbook to keep going at home. The neck pain was a pinched nerve in my shoulder. If I feel it getting stiff again, a few stretches and it goes away. I love you, Doug!

I'd argue that any "medical" practice whose founder claimed he learned his techniques from a ghost should probably be avoided on that basis alone.

It is, however, a legitimate if controversial strategy in Go.

I like to pop the fluid bubbles in my joints cos it feels good.

I would not pay some quack vast amounts of money to fuck around with my skeletal system and the parts of my body when my extremely important nerves travel to my brain.

It faaaake fr

I just got done with months of visits to a chiropractor, shit is so fake lol. The place I was sent to is literally a patient mill to essentially defraud insurance, as far as I could tell. Except it’s not really “fraud” since this is seen as legitimate medical care. It’s plainly absurd.

Honestly can’t wait to buy an inverter table and get way more benefits than these visits ever did lol

It's quackery.

But for some reason, in the US, it's often covered by insurance.

Squat University has hundreds of free videos on youtube that give good exercises that target weak muscles. She will need to see a real doctor who can figure out what's wrong.

It's a load of shit pseudomedicalscience filled with charlatans that believe in their own myths so fervently they make scientologists look impious in comparison, who's bankrollers have put enough money in the right pockets to get the appearance of legitimacy in the professional world. It's the perfect petite bourgeois commodity because it treats symptoms without curing them ensuring a long-term revenue stream for what you could get with a few quarters in the old mall massage chair.

I legit get bewildered looks when I suggest people go to a physical therapist instead of one of those charlatans. They're so widely seen as orthopedic spine physicians that saying otherwise undermines your credibility instead of theirs.

[I remembered this vid by doc Raynor giving a good overview of the history of the pseudomedicalscience and gives a more expert perspective on it and positive alternatives to chiropractic charlatans

look up something called "innate intelligence", it's the foundation of chiropracty and it should be too ridiculous even for your mom to take seriously.

or she's got some other reason to be seeing the chiro

I've heard that there are reasonable chiropractors but the majority of them are going to tell you you can cure ear infections by cracking your neck. There's been a number of people who die from sessions because they stroked out from pinched/damaged arteries.

https://the-health-site.com/has-a-chiropractor-ever-killed-someone.html

I side with the "its bullshit" crowd but also there are people who open a chiropractic shop with backgrounds in like, sports medicine and physical therapy.

In a moment of desperation I went to a local chiropractor for a bit who did have a background in actual physical therapy stuff. It was nice to be taken seriously about the pain and discomfort but outside of having an actual person with some background knowledge saying "hey, here's some light exercises and stretching to do on your own and here's some machines you can use" paying them 50 bucks for 30 minutes of "me using their equipment on my own and ending the time with 5 minutes of having a vibrating popping gun thing on my back" once or twice a week was way too much money.

When I was suspended from college for drugs, I had to get drug tested monthly at a local chiropractor and he weirded me out. He was always wearing a tux vest and a bowtie. And I guess offering drug testing was just another easy cash flow.

Once I slipped and dropped my piss all over his nice bathroom, he was furious but it was funny except I had to chug some water and generate more piss.

Anyway, chiropractic is 100% a sham medicine with a very dubious history that for some reason we tolerate and treat as if it is real medicine. It's a strange synthesis of various crockeries with an "eastern" veneer. If you really wanted alternative medicine, I would go to a legitimate traditional eastern practicioner before I ever went to a chiropractor, because at least traditional eastern medicine has millenia of history. Chiropractors can certainly fuck up your shit worse then how you came in.

And fuck off with anyone performing chiropractic on animals or even infants which I have seen.

And also as others chatters say, your mother probably needs to see a psychical therapist to actually get at the root of her problems. I am young (ish) but had some back and hip pain recently flare up, losing 10 lbs and gaining a tiny amount of strength pretty much made it go away.

I'm guessing your mom is older and probably will always have some level of back pain, but PT is the best way to get some relief. My dad recently had both knees replaced and it helped his back pain immensely, so I would also suggest looking into potential knee or hip problems that cause back pain due to the way she compensates. Of course, that's a pretty drastic surgery, which obviously costs money if you live in a shit hole like the USA, with its own tough recovery that requires it's own PT (I am very happy my dad got to medicare age and is a good patient when it comes to PT)

You might get some temporary relief, but in my experience physical therapy, massage, yoga, stretching, and exercise are all better in the long term.

I have a spot in my back that often gets "stuck" for lack of a better word. Like everything gets painfully clenched up and I can't stand up straight fully. I've gone to a couple chiropractors and sometimes they're able to crack that spot and get it unstuck, but that relief usually only lasts a few days. For a while my insurance paid for me to get a massage and a physical therapy session every week, and that helped more than anything, although it took a couple weeks to see big results. Eventually I was able to stretch and loosen up that spot in my back by myself.

From what I gather off watching asmr edits of woo woo chiro stuff it's a load of quackery.

Yeah, chiropractors are bullshit and most real doctors think so too.

A deep tissue massage and a physical therapist to teach good stretching techniques will do more in the long term for less money.

Yeah